


if your heart's breaking, let it ache

by smc_27



Category: The Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: Caroline Forbes & Damon Salvatore Friendship, Caroline Forbes-centric, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-25
Updated: 2017-11-25
Packaged: 2019-02-06 12:48:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,127
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12817875
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smc_27/pseuds/smc_27
Summary: Sometimes, when she lets herself really think about him (miss him) she is so freaking insulted that he never asked her to go with him. They would’ve made an amazing team. Not that she would’ve said yes. But it would have felt good to have been asked. It would’ve stopped her from constantly wondering how he couldn't.





	if your heart's breaking, let it ache

**Author's Note:**

> This starts sometime after Stefan makes his deal with the devil in S8, and deviates from canon from there.

Stefan isn’t coming back. 

She starts thinking it after two years and the only person who tries to convince her otherwise is Enzo. He says if he and Damon could fight the darkness, so can Stefan because he’s stronger than either of them. Damon doesn’t say flat out that Enzo’s wrong, but the look on his face when she catches his eye lets her know he agrees with her. It’s really, really messed up that she’s glad Damon’s on her side, when this whole mess is his fault in the first place. Honestly, it is. They all know it. There’s maybe no point in laying blame at this point. What good would it do? 

“Hang in there,” Bonnie says, and Caroline nods because what she wants to do is tell Bonnie to open her eyes and get a fucking grip. She can’t afford to lose her best friend, so she bites her tongue. 

She’s alone in the house with Damon, and he hands her a glass of blood and doesn’t say he’s sorry, but she knows he is. 

“Looks like it’s just you and me, kid,” he says instead, and Caroline lets herself cry a bit because she realizes then that he’s literally the only person in the world who knows what it feels like to be apart from the one you want to be with and have no way of getting them back.

Damon doesn’t say anything, but he sets his hand on her shoulder and purses his lips a little, and she thinks maybe this is the nicest he’s ever been. 

He leaves her alone in the living room, then, and she loves him a little for that, too.

… … …

She sees Alaric once in awhile and the girls often enough that she doesn’t think she’ll go crazy with missing them. This time, they meet at the armory and her daughters aren’t there and she doesn’t say anything until after he’s shown her a bunch of pictures and told her about how he’s doing at his new university. The girls are with their new nanny, he’s told her as much, and she’s a little annoyed that he thought he could get away with leaving it at that. 

“Why didn’t you bring them?” 

Alaric shakes his head, hands pressed on the table between them now. There’s some new artifact he’s found sitting there and it’s a weapon of some sort and Caroline would’ve cared so much more if that had anything to do with her. 

“I’m worried about you,” he says quietly, still not looking at her. It’s so, so stupid, but she’s glad someone has any thoughts about her at all. 

“I’m fine.”

“Caroline.” He chuckles a little, like she’s insane for thinking she could lie to him. “I know you better than that. This is killing you.” 

She lets out a loud laugh and he looks confused. “Of all the things that could actually kill me, it isn’t going to be a goddamn broken heart, Alaric.”

He just sighs. “It’s exactly shit like that, that makes me scared for you.”

Caroline straightens her posture, sets her face in a smile and tilts her head. “Haven’t you heard? I’m going to live forever.” She turns to walk out and he calls her name as she goes. She just says, “I want to see my kids next time!” and lets it echo through this creepy old place. It’s not a threat. He’ll listen anyway.

… … …

Sometimes, when she lets herself really think about him (miss him) she is so freaking insulted that he never asked her to go with him. They would’ve made an amazing team. Not that she would’ve said yes. But it would have felt good to have been asked. It would’ve stopped her from constantly wondering how he _couldn’t_.

… … ...

It’s her birthday and she makes herself cupcakes, sticks a candle in one and stands in the kitchen and tries to gather up enough belief that she deserves a wish or that she’d ever actually get anything she wanted. 

“The problem is,” Damon says from behind her. She turns to see him leaning against the door frame. “Everyone knows what you want, so you probably won’t get it.”

She didn’t need him to say it for her to know that’s true. 

He kisses her cheek, blows out the candle, says, “Fuck wishes, to be honest,” and she laughs for a solid two minutes straight as he eats the cupcake and smiles at her with icing on his lips.

She feels like she could cry, too, but there’s no point to that anymore, either. 

… … …

“So.” Caroline freezes in her tracks, doesn’t have to look into the living room to know exactly who’s somehow gotten into her house. “You thought convincing your boyfriend to kill me would somehow deliver him from Satan?”

She’s breathing heavily, which he’s probably heard since the second he opened his mouth and announced himself. 

“Fiancé,” she corrects, even if it’s not true, even if she’d thrown the ring back at Stefan before she and Damon came up with the idea of killing Klaus. 

Klaus smirks, says, “Lucky bloke,” quietly enough that he probably didn’t even really mean to do it. She turns her whole body towards him, and god, he’s still beautiful. She’ll give him that. “Hello, Caroline.” She tilts her head. The pleasantry is totally unnecessary. “Glad to see me?” 

“Confused, really.” She crosses her arms. He looks to the floor. “Where’s Damon? Did you…”

“Picking up dinner,” he answers. It sounds like bullshit, but then again, she never really could tell when he was telling the truth. “Figured we could all catch up over some of this town’s mediocre burgers.”

She doesn’t want to laugh, either. 

She’s too tired for this. 

“Klaus, what are you doing here?” She sounds as exhausted as she feels, and he’s right in front of her, then, fingertips pushing her hair off her cheek. Her eyes meet his. 

She hasn’t been touched by a man like this in literally years. It feels a hell of a lot better than she remembers. Better than she wants it to. 

Klaus swallows thickly, that way he used to do around her sometimes. It makes it seem like he’s got some feelings and he doesn’t know what to do with them. These moments were so few and far between back then that she was always left wanting more, and maybe that’s why she never actually truly said _no_ when he showed an interest in her. 

“I do have capacity for worry, you know,” he confesses, very quietly, avoiding her eyes. She feels the tips of his fingers brush her wrist, remembers for the first time in at least five years the bracelet he gave her once upon a time. He looks directly at her, then. “Stefan is my friend.” 

She chuckles a little, kinks her brow. “This doesn’t seem like it’s about Stefan.”

He grins at her confidence. “You distracted me.” 

She laughs, head tipped back, and then his thumb is trailing down the side of her neck and she wishes he’d just put his mouth on her anywhere at all, but tires crunch on the gravel and he steps away and her cheeks flush and he asks her if she’d like him to fix her a drink. She just nods, and when Damon walks in, he looks at least mildly apologetic for not giving her a heads up.

… … …

She fucks Klaus almost exactly a year and a half later, when she’s traveling for the sake of traveling (and not being in Mystic Falls) and takes a detour to New Orleans on her way to the Dominican. 

“No one can know,” she tells him after stripping off his shirt, pinning him beneath her. He obviously wouldn’t be ‘stuck’ there if he didn’t want to be. She loves the way he wants her, the way he says her name, the way his fingers dig into her skin with such urgence she finds herself so turned on she can barely stand it. 

“Who would I tell?” 

“Klaus,” she bites out, nails scraping his chest. He hisses, smirks, and nods his head. “Promise me.”

“I’ll do whatever you want.” It’s sexy as hell, but then there’s something else behind it, too, like all she has to do is ask and he’s hers. 

Caroline smiles, leans down, making sure to press right down against him, and tugs at his bottom lip with her teeth. Even curse words sound beautiful in that accent, she’s learning. 

“Who knew you were so easy to control?” she asks, and his hand goes into her hair. It’s gentle. She likes the difference here, him treating her like glass, her treating him however she wants. 

“I don’t want you to stop,” he says, like that’s some kind of an answer, even though she wasn’t really angling for one. 

She doesn’t feel even a little bit guilty until she gets back home and sets her things in her room - in Stefan’s room - and sits alone in the quiet with the snow falling heavily outside and Damon downstairs somewhere. 

It feels like cheating, now, as if Stefan has any capacity to care about that kind of thing. 

… … …

She cradles a cup of coffee in her hands and sits with Alaric in the kitchen of the house he’s living in in Atlanta with their children. The girls are old enough now that they’re off with friends - one of whom has a car and Alaric says gives him nightmares about what they could be doing when they aren’t home. Caroline smiles and thinks of her own teenage years and tries not to think about her daughters acting the way she did. Then she tries not to think of how she’s not there to talk to them, to guide them. 

He’s apparently given up on trying to find someone to love, because he’s still single, after all these years, and as they sit there and she notices the grey at his temples and the faint lines around his eyes, and she wonders what things would’ve been like if she’d just stayed with him. 

It never would’ve worked. But it would have at least been _something_.

“I don’t know how you do it,” he says during a lull in the conversation. 

“Do what?” 

He blinks slowly like she’s being a little thick, not just getting it right away. “I don’t know how your heart handles all this disappointment and still you know you’ve got an infinity of memories ahead of you. How do you have room for all that _pain_.” 

Honestly, she isn’t even sure if that makes sense, but she knows what he means anyway and she’s not going to pretend it’s not something she ever thinks about. 

“What’s the alternative?” she asks, shrugging her shoulder.

“Just don’t give up on him,” he says after a beat too long, and it’s almost like begging, and it pisses her off.

“Oh my god, Ric.” He closes his eyes. Yeah, she still starts her fights the same way. Who cares? “Are you serious? Don’t _give up_ on him? Maybe you should be talking to him, not me, if you’re gonna say something that stupid. God.” He’s smiling, now. It’s annoying. “ _What_?” 

“I’ve missed our talks.” Caroline rolls her eyes. Maybe he means it, but he’s also a sarcastic shit disturber and always has been. “So then why haven’t you moved on?” 

She doesn’t need this from him. She doesn’t want it from anyone. But she also knows that of everyone in the world, he’s the one who’s always going to try to get her to see the light. She’s not about to ask who he suggests she move on with, because knowing him, he’ll say Damon or Elijah or Klaus, and she just…

No.

… … …

Part of the entire problem is that Stefan pops up every few months to remind her that, yep, still an asshole and incapable of love. He jerks her around and treats her like crap to the point even Damon punches him in the face for it. 

God, the fact that Damon is practically her best friend these days is pretty freaking telling. 

During one particularly ridiculous visit in which Stefan tells her about sleeping with a few women at once just days before (and before draining them each of their blood), Caroline clenches her jaw and won’t give him the satisfaction of walking away even though she wants to _run_.

“You’re really just so pathetic,” she tells him, voice as even as she can make it. Stefan blinks and lifts his brows. They’re alone in his bedroom. Her bedroom. 

(The fact that they’re alone tells her he only said these things to deliberately hurt her, and she thinks that this, now, is the first time she’s really understood what it means for him to be a ripper.) 

“Am I?” 

She smiles. It’s fake. He’ll know, but she doesn’t care. “Oh yeah. Big time.” 

“Really? Because I mean - “ He steps towards her. She doesn’t budge. Fuck him. She’s stronger than he remembers if he thinks she’s going to move just because he’s trying to intimidate her. “You’re the one still here.” He glances around. “Among my things. Sleeping in my bed every night. So tell me, Caroline. If I’m pathetic, what does that make you?” 

He’s laughing when he leaves. She throws her glass and then a bunch of other things at the wall after him. 

… … …

Just once, she and Damon are drinking together, sitting on lawn chairs in their backyard because that’s just the kind of mood they’re in. Really, maybe it’s because it’s a full moon and they’re both _just_ miserable enough to want to test their luck. God, that’s morbid.

But anyway. Just this once, this only time either of them has so much as breathed a word of consideration, she’s tipping back her glass of red wine and Damon looks over at her from where he’s slouching in his chair, head leaning back against it. 

“What?” she laughs. It’s this kind of look that she never used to be able to trust. Now, they’ve been around one another, living together, _friends_ , long enough that it doesn’t even really make her bat an eye. 

“Wouldn’t it just be so much easier if we could just pass the time together.” 

Caroline rolls her eyes. Technically, that’s exactly what they’ve been doing, but she knows that he doesn’t mean drinking coffee together in the morning and going to movies. 

“Don’t be stupid,” she says dismissively. 

“I’m just saying.” He sips his drink. “We could fuck around and they’d never know, but we wouldn’t be so…” He pauses, and she thinks he’s just trying to _not_ say the word ‘lonely’. “Bored.” 

“I’m not bored,” she says, way too quickly for him to actually believe her. “I’m sitting in the yard like white trash, drinking a 100 year old bottle of wine out of these truly hideous glasses leftover from the 1800s or whatever.” Damon purses his lips like he doesn’t want to laugh, or like he’s trying to be offended about family heirlooms she knows don’t mean a whole lot to him. “Who could be bored with that?” 

There’s a sound in the woods, an animal of some sort, and they both go quiet and still, listening. It’s no bigger than a racoon, from what she can hear, and Damon relaxes quickly enough, too. They go back to sitting there in silence. Caroline looks up at the stars. 

“I wouldn’t do that to her,” he says after a while, quiet enough that she knows he’s being really and truly honest. 

Caroline smiles. _God,_ she misses Elena.

“I know.” 

And she feels guilty for Klaus and all that entire mess, but then this situation isn’t the same as Damon and Elena, and Elena’s not _choosing_ to not be here. 

“I don’t know if I can ever forgive him.” 

She listens to Damon’s breath. She watches as he looks down at his glass. Or maybe his ring. She can’t tell. It doesn’t matter.

He echoes, “I know,” and then they both get really good and drunk and fall asleep in their backyard like dying is a risk either of them is really going to take. 

… … ...

An unknown number flashes across her screen and when she answers, it’s Matt’s voice telling her, “Stefan tried to kill me.” 

It’s pretty indicative of what a shit show everything has become that she just closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. She hasn’t seen Stefan in over a year now. Figures he’d come around and do something so monumentally stupid. 

“Where are you?” she asks, because he’s usually not far from Mystic Falls. Which she still doesn’t understand and he never has an answer when she asks him _why_. “Are you okay?” 

She cares more about Matt than she cares about most people, because as shitty as he was to her when they were both 17 and had a whole slew of problems that seemed so important at the time, he’s one of the few people she thinks might actually really understand her. 

That might not be true, but she doesn’t want to stop believing it. 

He tells her he staked Stefan and that he’ll light a flame if she wants him to, and he is absolutely 100 per cent not joking, and Caroline wants to _cry_ at how quickly she says no. At this point, Stefan should be dead to her. She wishes it were that easy. 

She doesn’t tell Damon, because she can handle this alone and she doesn’t want him to interfere. She doesn’t need his help. She doesn’t need anyone’s help. She’s not some damsel in distress. She’s a hell of a lot stronger than she’s ever been, and she can’t stand it when the people in her life act like she’s fragile with anything that has anything to do with Stefan. 

Matt lets her into his house and then walks to the kitchen, leaves her in the living room with her corpse of an ex-lover, and she stands over Stefan’s body and puts her hands on her hips. She kicks his hip with the toe of her boot. She doesn’t expect anything to happen. Maybe she just wanted to kick him.

(She wants to _hurt_ him, but she can’t honestly think of anything she could do to him that would affect him nearly as much as what she’s been feeling for the past however many years.)

(She knows exactly how many.)

She’d pull the stake out here and now, but it would be a whole big thing and she doesn’t want to put Matt in any further danger, really. 

He appears in the doorway with a glass of orange juice in his hand and a toasted bagel in the other, like there aren’t two vampires in his house and one isn’t halfway dead. 

"How long til he wakes up, you think?" he asks, and Caroline shrugs her shoulder. Honestly, she's surprised he's been out this long, given how strong he likely is these days. "Want some juice? Fresh squeezed."

He's grinning boyishly when he says it, and Caroline lets out the most genuine laugh she's heard from herself in so long it strikes her as foreign.

"Wanna help me get him home?"

Matt sighs like that's the most exhausting thing he's ever heard her say. "I don't get why you don't just put him out of his misery."

See, she can't even argue that. Stefan has to be miserable. Or he will be when he's himself again and not this monster. God, she's thought about it so often: he's going to hate himself when the guilt floods him and he realizes what he's done.

She confesses, for the first time in over 10 years, what they've probably all known to be true.

"I still love him."

Matt takes a breath like he somehow wasn't expecting her to say it out loud, like it scares the hell out of him. After all, what does it say about her if she can still find it in herself to think Stefan's anyone worth her heart.

When they're driving to the boarding house with Stefan's body in the back of Matt's pickup truck, he doesn't even take his eyes off the road when he says, "I'm doing this for you, you know." She knows. She does. "If I'd known how all this shit was gonna go down, I would've killed them both when we were 17."

Caroline bites the inside of her lip so he won't see her cry.

She can't blame him a single bit, is the thing. Can't say she hasn't had that same thought herself.

… … …

Maybe he’s trying to annoy them into letting him out of the cellar and Caroline thinks Damon is about two sleepless nights away from giving in. 

Stefan will not _shut up_. He talks and sings (badly) and clangs his chains around and just shouts their names over and over and _over_. They won’t feed him and they won’t visit him and Caroline is goddamn _terrified_ that they’re not going to break him and that he’s going to get out and then she’ll just never see him again. 

Damon’s pouring a cup of coffee from the pot she just made. It’s too early - the sun isn’t even up - and Stefan’s finally given it a rest. At least for the moment. He probably heard them up and figured his job was done because they can’t _sleep_. 

“Would it be wrong to muzzle him until he passes out from hunger?” 

Caroline sighs and shoots Damon a look. It’s funny, but it’s not funny. Honestly, she’s considered leaving all together and staying with Matt or at her mom’s house or with Ric or literally anywhere else. Stefan’s driving her insane, in part because he keeps calling her name like he actually wants to talk to her, but she knows better than to think he means it. He’s using a voice he knows will hook her in, and she fucking hates him for that. 

“I wouldn’t be against staking him again,” she says, and Damon chuckles like he thinks she’s joking. She isn’t. He grabs the eggs from the fridge so he can make his own; they may live together but she doesn’t take care of him unless he really needs it. “I’m not sure how much more of this I can handle.” 

“Well, this is just the start of it. Once he’s all weak and pathetic, we’ll have to get in there and tinker.” 

That’s what she’s afraid of. 

“He has to _want_ to turn his humanity back on. Just because Matt almost killed him for good, we have no reason to think he’s suddenly changed his mind and wants to stop.” 

Damon starts scrambling his eggs and watches her while he does it. “You’ll have to show him what he’s missing.” Caroline rolls her eyes. She’s being serious. “I mean it. Once he realizes he could have _you_ , he’ll come back.” 

She’s so furious. It’s like he’s suddenly forgotten that for _years_ she’s been trying to get through to Stefan. She has absolutely no reason to believe it’ll work now. 

“Or,” Damon says, and his smirk is back, and she braces herself. “You _could_ just get naked and fuck him into submission. But for the love of all that’s left in the world, _please_ tell me to get out before you do that.” 

Okay, _now_ she’s pissed.

She ignores him, which is exactly what he deserves, and marches down the stairs to the cellar. She remembers how creeped out she used to be by this place. It’s all dark and damp and it smells like something died down there. Which, well....Not exactly inappropriate. 

Stefan’s leaning back against the wall looking pale and weak, but he still manages that sinister grin that makes her mad and scared all at once. The front of his shirt is caked with dry blood, and his hair could use a wash. 

Caroline is terrified that she doesn’t _want_ him as much as she has every other time she’s seen him. It’s completely new and scaring the shit out of her. Maybe she just doesn’t want to get her hopes up only to be disappointed again. Self-preservation, or whatever. 

“You look like hell,” he says before she can even open her mouth. 

Yeah, she’s already tired of this. Of everything. She can’t remember a time when she didn’t feel tired.

“You’re a real beacon of health, yourself.” He smirks at the quip. It doesn’t reach his eyes. She knows exactly how he’s got to be feeling, this long after his last taste of blood. It’s like there’s sand in your veins, drying you out from the inside. “How long can I expect this to go on? Because if you’re just going to sit in here and rot rather than do what you know will get you out of here, there’s no point to any of this.” Something flashes in his eyes. It’s like a realization that she’s just _done_ , and she doesn’t care if he knows that or if it means absolutely nothing to him. “What’s it gonna be? You wanna keep doing this to yourself, to us?” 

She means her and him. She means her and Damon. She means everyone. He can take it however he wants. 

“You’ll let me out?” he asks, hopeful, or desperate, or… “I’m not staying.” 

She says, “I don’t care,” and she _means it_ , and then she hears Damon behind her, and hearing her say that is probably news to him, too. “God, Stefan. If you haven’t cared all along that I’m _here_ and I love you, I’m not going to fucking beg.”

Apparently, he can’t read the room, because he looks her up and down and says, “Wouldn’t hate it if you did.” 

Caroline takes a deep breath, tries not to let him see that she’s two seconds from crying, and puts her hands in the air. 

“I’m done.” She turns and Damon’s looking at her pleadingly, practically willing her to stay and keep talking. Stefan’s a fucking caricature and she’s not playing this game anymore. It’s not fair of either of them to expect her to. “He’s all yours.”

“Caroline,” Damon says, warningly. “Wait. Look…”

“Nope.” Her boots dig into the dirt right below the stairs leading her the hell out of this place. “Not my problem. Really, _really_ not my problem.” 

She sees Stefan’s face fall right before she turns to leave.

She doesn’t have it in her to care what that means.

… … …

The girls are strong enough now that Alaric insists they can flip Stefan’s switch without his consent, and Caroline has a lot of really weird feelings about that in and of itself, aside from just not wanting her kids anywhere around him. She doesn’t trust him. He can say such terrible things to her and to Damon, and he knows them best. What in the world would his reaction be to two young girls he probably doesn’t even remember, who’re willing, able, and _going to_ reset his brain without even having to touch him. 

“No.”

“Caroline.” Damon and Alaric say it at the same time. The girls are upstairs sleeping. They got in late and stayed up even later and Caroline has _missed them_ so much she barely wanted to let them out of her sight. 

“I said no. This is ridiculous.” She turns to Alaric. He looks afraid of what she’s about to say. “How could you even _think_ of putting them in that position. He could hurt them. He could _kill_ them.” 

“You don’t honestly believe he’d do that,” Damon says, like it’s the dumbest thing she’s ever said, like she doesn’t know what she’s talking about, like she hasn’t been worrying about this for two entire days, since the idea was first brought up. 

“I’m saying I don’t know _what_ he’d do, and I don’t trust him with my children.” 

Damon looks angry. Alaric looks like he can convince her. She isn’t so sure. 

(And maybe, really, part of her is just always going to be so incredibly hurt that _she_ isn’t enough to make Stefan come back.)

“Sleep on it,” Alaric says, and Caroline just shakes her head. They’re not listening to her.

“I’m not going to change my mind.”

… … …

She punches Alaric in the face. He deserves it. He went against her wishes, and if this is another one of those ‘they’re my kids not yours’ things, she’s going to lose her fucking mind. Taking the girls to the basement before Caroline was up for the day and having them meddle with Stefan’s brain after she unequivocally said not to do it? 

She’s never been so mad. 

But anyway, she didn’t even put her full force behind the punch, because she doesn’t want to, like, kill him. 

Damon, pressing a bag of ice into Alaric’s hand, though he hasn’t asked for one, seems unfazed by her reaction and just says, “He’s upstairs.”

She steps into the doorway of one of the spare bedrooms, because his room is _hers_ and at least one of these idiots had the good sense not to drop him into her bed. She spent last night at Matt’s. He understood every single one of her concerns. He still thinks they should’ve killed Stefan when they had the chance. She thinks he’ll always wish they could have. And she loves him for not doing that to her.

Stefan is sitting up in bed, looking out the window like there’s anything to look at but bare trees. It’s cold in here. She sees the window on the opposite side of the room is open, but doesn’t really care to ask why.

He looks at her, then, and god, he looks like himself again. Whatever it is about having no humanity that’s always just written all over his place has gone, and there’s a part of her that thinks it’s strange.

She wants to cry when she realizes it’s because she’s known him as a ripper almost as long as she’s known him as anything else.

And god, at least he has the good sense to look ashamed. 

He says her name and she lifts her hand in a wave, which immediately feels stupid, and then he looks at her ring finger as if he doesn’t remember the night she gave his ring back, which is just…

She turns to leave. She’ll go back. Later.

She passes Damon on the way out of the house. Alaric tries to stop her. Her daughters ask where she’s going.

“Nowhere,” she says, and it’s the truth, really, because if she were really going to _leave_ , lord knows she would’ve done it by now.


End file.
